It shifted around him, like the great south seas. Innumerable whispers echoed throughout the abyssal expanse, the gibbering wails of the restless dead. There was light, yet there was not. He could see himself, but nothing else. He was bloody and frail, his entrails looping from the massive gash in his lower stomach, and his eye hung from it's dark-skinned socket, like a fleshy demented yo-yo.

He screamed.

In all his life, he had never really screamed, or been scared. He was Drow, and an assassin to boot, so there was little to no room for fear and weakness. In fact, he had faced down an angel of death and walked away better for it. Now though, he was no longer in control. He couldn't change this gibbering madness, and it was gnawing at him like some demented dog on it's well-worn bone. He could feel his sanity slowly slipping away from him, sloughing through his fingers like so much blood. His own screams echoed back to him through the twilight hell, and instead of familiar, it was distorted. Now, through the black, an immense voice chuckled. With the terrible sound, all other voices ceased. He felt his body being transported, and a sudden feeling of agonizing pain, like he was being pulled through a giant metal mesh. He closed his eyes against the ravaging pain, and when he next opened them, he gasped.

He was in the same room he had met the angel of death earlier in his life.

The man he had seen the angel feeding on was there, as well, sitting in a plain wooden chair. Something was different, though. The man’s eyes had changed, and instead of the frightened blue eyes his memory had recalled. The man’s eyes were deep and hollow, black reflective pools, like the surface of a cauldron of pitch. It’s head turned, and it’s mouth opened. “You have squandered my servants gift, mortal.” It intoned in a sepulchral monotone.

He thought for a moment...

Then his remaining eye grew wide.

“Y-you are...” He stuttered, and fell back. Instead of hitting cold floor, he landed in a chair. The man smiled, a terrible and dark thing for something that for all the world looked like a corpse.

“I am who you mortals wish me to be. I am the watcher in the dark, the end of all life, even the final succor.” The man intoned in the same monotone. “Ever since the birth of the first god, I have been there. I wait, even for those deemed immortal. I am the beginning and the end, and I will remain until all life has run it’s course.”

He sat there, staring at the man. This man had claimed to be death incarnate, and if it had been anything else, he would have dismissed it as mad ravings. But this was not anyone else, this was a man he had seen have his soul torn from his body.

This was Death.

With this realization, he dropped to his knees, inadvertently crushing his own entrails. He felt no pain, however, and as he kneeled there, he felt, more than heard, the man rise from the chair and walk over to him. As a cold hand was lain on his equally cold shoulder, the sepulchral voice spoke, fading just like his vision.

“You have squandered the gift, but I will grant you another chance to redeem yourself.”

Almost as an afterthought, the voice added, “Do not disappoint me, Acheron...”